Inorganic materials are widely used as sorbents for removing or separating metal ions in a variety of applications. They are advantageous over their organic counterparts in that they are stable to harsh environments including high radiation fields and extreme pH conditions encountered in certain applications. Inorganic sorbents can also be less expensive than other sorbent materials, enabling their use in many separation and environmental remediation applications.
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are hybrid materials that are built from metal ion connectors and polydentate bridging ligands and have shown potential in a number of applications such as nonlinear optics, gas adsorption, catalysis, and more recently, biomedical imaging and drug delivery. Because of relatively weak metal-ligand bonds compared to typical covalent bonds, MOFs also act as interesting templates or starting materials to prepare other useful functional materials. The present invention relates to the use of MOFs as templating materials to develop highly porous inorganic materials that can be used as sorbents for various applications, including but not limited to, radionuclide removal from high level nuclear waste, treating acid mine drainage, extraction of uranium from seawater as sustainable nuclear fuel, removal of radioactive Sr from contaminated seawater, decontamination of heavy metal ions from soil and other sources.